If you are into fluid dynamics then you have a real treat in store over the next couple of days. The American Physical Society's (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) meeting is underway in San Diego and runs November 19-20, 2012. For a taster of the eagerly anticipated presentations here's a brief selection ranging from huddling penguins to knuckleball soccer kicks.

Fluid Dynamics And Mathematics Used To Study Penguin Huddles

Blanchette and his mathematician colleagues at UCM devised a model of penguin huddles that made the assumption that each individual penguin acted, in self-interest, to minimize its own heat loss. What the model shows is that this self-centered behavior ends up resulting in an equitable sharing of heat among the group. Read more >>

Scientist invents a cloak of visibility … against ocean waves (!)

Reza Alam, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, will be speaking about a way he has discovered of neutralizing ocean waves in near-shore or off-shore areas. Read more >>

Mosquitos fail at flight in heavy fog

Mosquitos have the remarkable ability to fly in clear skies as well as in rain, shrugging off impacts from raindrops more than 50 times their body mass. But just like modern aircraft, mosquitos also are grounded when the fog thickens. Read more >>

Visualizing floating cereal patterns to understand nanotechnology processes

Small floating objects change the dynamics of the surface they are on. This is an effect every serious student of breakfast has seen as rafts of floating cereal o's arrange and rearrange themselves into patterns on the milk. Now scientists have suggested that this process may offer insight into nanoscale engineering processes. Read more >>

What's behind the success of the soccer 'Knuckleball'

What makes soccer star Christiano Ronaldo's "knuckleball" shot so unpredictable and difficult to stop? Read more >>